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by pavel_lishin
58 days ago
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I have a 3D printer, and I've definitely seen people at local art fairs & such selling 3D printed stuff. It all looks ... well, it all looks sort of cheap. Unless you're printing at incredibly high quality, you can always tell that it was 3D printed, and half the people selling things don't even bother to do much clean up of the print after the fact - a little sanding would go a long way, but they don't bother. It ends up just being cheap plastic trinkets that I wouldn't buy even if I didn't have a 3D printer of my own. Just something to watch out for, should anyone here be inspired; you might think your print looks good, but you need to run it by someone who's willing to tell you to your face that it looks crap. |
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For most 3D printing, there are a couple ways around this: sanding + painting like you mentioned, then also sanding + casting into resin or metal. For a topomap project, I experimented with acetone smoothing, but ultimately used "adaptive" layer lines that made the layers hard to see. Another "print only" option is fuzzy skin, which does a lot to obscure the shiny plastic trinket look. All of these options take extra work, though.
With the card stands, the plastic aesthetic was less of a concern, since it was a vehicle for a vendor to get their logo in every picture/video of trading cards they took for cliens. The two things that helped me make the stands feel less cheap where using plastic with a matte finish (less "shiny plastic"), and adding 2oz worth of weights, so at least when you picked up the card stand it felt heavy.
Where I lean in with my printing now is to focus on things that are so personalized that folks get over the plastic (topography maps from home areas, card stands with their name/logo), and then audiences that don't care: children and pets.